


made a torch of myself

by justsleepwalkin



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Brainwashing, Canon Compliant, Episode: s01e09 Left Behind, Explicit Language, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Madness, Memory Issues, Not Really Character Death, Pre-Slash, Spoilers, Unhappy Ending, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 12:51:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6424846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justsleepwalkin/pseuds/justsleepwalkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1x09, Massive spoilers.</p><p>When they bring him back, his hands go to his scars. It's a ritual, he thinks. Like waking up and cataloging injuries, but this is waking up and cataloging <i>himself</i>. Remember who he is at his core.</p><p>There are no scars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	made a torch of myself

**Author's Note:**

> I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DONE WRITING AFTER THIS EPISODE. DAMMIT.
> 
> I made everything worse. I'm so sorry. 
> 
>  
> 
> I lit up like a match  
> cause I bled gasoline  
> made a torch of myself  
> till the moon was mine  
> stars made of me  
> Oh I lit up that sky  
> -About as Helpful as You Can Be Without Being Any Help at All by Dan Mangan  
> [(♫)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdk_STriHl4)

Mick's hands lose their grip on the rat that he'd spent the last twenty minutes trying to catch and that's the first thing that the Time Masters take away from him, the first time they look at him with a sneer of the disgust, and the first time Mick offers them their submission. Mick knows his limits and he's exceeded them so long ago. Time's a mystery to him. He couldn't keep track of it. Not like. Like some people.

Even in his deprivation of _everything_ , Mick knows this face. Had a gun to him, once. Time Cop. “Trusted” friend of Hunter's. Mick tried to kill him before Chronos stepped in. 

“Hey, Coward,” Mick groans. 

Druce ignores the greeting, hands laced behind his back. Looking down at Mick, like everyone always looks down at Mick. Isn't that nice that he can truly _say_ everyone now? There used to be an exception to that. Well, look, he can be a completionist. How nice. 

“I'm only going to make this offer once, and if you do not except, I am not going to kill you. I am going to leave you here, right as I found you.”

Mick scowls. He's too tired to do more than draw himself up, eyes of coal watching the Time Master. “Start talkin',” he barks. 

Druce's lips curl back, a twitch of movement. “Your team abandoned you. You know them. You've traveled with them. You've been to many times, places, with them. _That_ information is gold right now, in my line of work. We need them dead, and I think, perhaps, _you_ want that as well. Am I correct?”

“You're damn right you're correct,” Mick replies, no hesitation. “When do we start?”

* * *

Time does funny things to the mind. The absence of time is worse. He doesn't let the Time Masters near him and he takes more than he needs from them. Food, mostly. Malnourished, they told him, and he replied with an angry _no shit, you would be too._ In return for his needs he gives them dates and locations and when they're surprised that he remembers, he stabs a knife through the hand of the woman interrogating him. They were stupid enough to let him have one to eat with. 

After that they're more veiled with their insults to his intelligence. 

He sees the woman again, an hour later. Her hand doesn't have a single mark to it. 

There's a cold fury in her eyes that he recognizes from someone just as cold and he's taken away to a room, left, locked in. The walls, ceiling, and floor pull away until there's only glass and there's this emptiness, a void, all around him. They leave him there for the equivalent of days, or maybe weeks, he's not really sure. He lasts for a long time without losing his mind because his fingers trace his burn scars knowingly and he thinks about orange flaring to life in that nothingness.

But eventually his skin's crawling and he wants _out_. Even that forest he was left behind in was better than this. He saw the sun, experienced the day change. Heard birds. Felt wind. Even Iron Heights was better than this.

He screams his throat raw. He screams until they let him out.

It's the second time he offers them his submission. He even mumbles a quiet apology to the woman and she turns away, satisfied, leaving him under the command of Druce.

* * *

No one talks to him unless they need something outta him, and that's usually how it is. There was a time when that was different, but he's blocked those memories out, or he's simply forgotten. He doesn't know which.

He think they've killed him. More than once. Doesn't really know, doesn't really think he's existing. Doesn't remember _how_ to exist.

In between training him to fight for them, he gathers enough material to make a gorgeous fire. Escapes outside and burns down a chunk of their forest and he drinks it in, dreaming that he's back in _that_ forest, except there's someone with him, a cold, cold man and he's watching the man die and it's _delicious_. 

Now if only he could remember _who_ that man is and why it feels so good to imagine his death.

This time he knows that the Time Masters kill him. This time, there's no confusion. 

When they bring him back, his hands go to his scars. It's a ritual, he thinks. Like waking up and cataloging injuries, but this is waking up and cataloging _himself_. Remember who he is at his core.

There are no scars. 

He claws fingers down his arms like that will reveal the burns to him, but there's nothing, nothing, _nothing_ and he shouts, strangled, at the first Time Master he sees and they have to hold him down and sedate him, but by the time they finally succeed his arms are covered in trails of blood and he's hysterical.

* * *

He wakes up again and again, fake mornings and nights. Hundreds of fake days.

He's in fighting shape and he stops looking for scars.

There's a woman he sees often and she always looks at him like he's her mutt and he watches her with dead eyes but he has no bite to offer her and every time she tells him _you're coming along well_ and he thinks he should be angry but he doesn't remember how.

* * *

When he first leaves the Vanishing Point and experiences _time_ again, he doubles over in pain. There's blood coming out of his ears and he's on his knees, holding his head like it's splitting open, and Druce is standing over him, looking down, impassive. 

Mick yells out for help and Druce does nothing to aid him. Instead, he starts talking. Stating things that make no sense to Mick. 2016, 1975, 1986, 1958. Rip Hunter, Carter Hall, Kendra Saunders, Sara Lance, Ray Palmer, Jefferson Jackson, Martin Stein, Leonard Snart. 

“I don't know what you want from me!” Mick yells. He falls to his side and pain roils through him and for some reason his mind tells him that begging is below him, but this is Druce and Druce is in charge and Mick begs. “Please, make it stop!”

Druce _smiles_. Druce never smiles. “You've given me exactly what I want.” 

They go back to the Vanishing Point, Mick panting and keening. 

They kill him.

* * *

Mick dreams. 

There's a campfire in the middle of a forest and he sits on one of the nine boulders surrounding it. Across the way, blue eyes are watching him. There's tears there and his mind whispers that tears don't exist in those eyes. Not for him, not for anyone. 

But this man has been crying.

“I wish there was some other way, Mick.”

The scene crumbles when Mick gets to his feet, filled with an anger that he forgot was possible. There's a gun in his hand that both feels foreign and feels like home. 

“All of this, from day one, it's been your fault, Snart!” Mick yells, unable to stop himself. The campfire loses control and as the scene crumbles further, it's turned into a forest fire. 

The man's standing in those flames, a foot away from Mick. 

His subconscious knows who he's yelling at, but he doesn't. He doesn't recognize or understand any of this. He doesn't know why a name keeps falling from his lips.

“You're selfish, Snart,” Mick seethes. “Always have been. Looked out for yourself. Never _once_ thought to include me. Never once even acted like you cared—”

“Stop right there,” the man interrupts, voice low and dangerous. “Don't put words into my mouth.”

“I don't have to _if they're true_.”

The man steps forward. Flames climb up his legs, but he doesn't appear to care. His gaze hardens and there's a restlessness about him that only stops when his arms drop to his side. 

There's fury though, and Mick remembers _fury_.

“You don't know what you're talking about,” the man says. 

Mick laughs, bellowing into crisp night air, filled with smoke and ash. “Fuck you, Snart.” 

“What do you want me to tell you, Mick? You want me to say that I stranded you out there and never once looked back, never once _thought of you_? That I stopped acting like you ever existed? Do you want the truth?” the man growls through clenched teeth. “You don't even know, do you?” he asks, his voice hitching. “Even when you were with us, you never knew?”

“What the hell are you droning on about?”

“You _idiot_ , Mick. You—”

* * *

Mick snaps awake and swears he smells fire, but it fades from his senses and he shakes his head. Druce is standing nearby, talking to a doctor.

“Why you gotta keep killin' me?” Mick asks, putting a hand to his head. He tries to think of the dream and when he does, it's gone with a blink. He remembers _Snart_ for only a second of fondness but then it, too, escapes. 

“Every time we restore you, it makes you better,” Druce explains to him. “Surely you can feel it?”

He can, actually. He thought it'd make him less of a fighter. That he'd be starting from scratch each time, but his mind and muscles always remember. 

“You're ready to go into the field at long last,” Druce continues. “Do you remember the mission?”

 _Vandal Savage_ —and then his brain _screams_ at him, shutting down on everything.

Druce frowns and looks disappointed. “I see,” he says, shaking his head. “Well, we'll have to make due with your... faults. Once more though, and I think it will be enough.” He takes something from a doctor and Mick knows it's a weapon and he jerks away. 

“Stop killing me! I only just woke up! What does it achieve _this_ time?!”

Restraints latch around him and he yells in frustration because he knows he's stronger than this, knows he's stronger than _Druce_ , but the moment he almost lays a hand on the Time Master, his mind screams again and he's flat on his back, seizing. 

“I need you to remember the mission,” Druce drawls.

It reminds him of—

Mick dies.

* * *

There's a campfire and all nine rocks have someone sitting on them, except Mick. 

Druce is sitting in Mick's spot.

“To preserve time itself, everyone here has to die, Chronos,” Druce tells him.

Mick sways. “'Chronos'?” he repeats. Why does that sound familiar? 

“Yes. We can't very well call you by your old name.” Druce looks over and smiles at him and it makes Mick's stomach churn. “Not that you remember that, hm?”

He tries to deny it, but he can't.

“When you've killed them all, you'll wake up, and you'll be ready. You know the dates and locations; you told them to us, and we've kept them implanted in your mind.”

“...Yeah,” he answers with some hesitation. He finds it hard to disagree with Druce. 

Druce gives him one nod, and then he vanishes.

Mick stares at the remaining eight people, soaking in their appearances, memorizing each one so that he can kill them on sight further down the road.

There's a gun in his hand and it isn't the one from his last dream. This one doesn't feel like home. This one feels like a shackle. 

He starts firing, one after another, even when they start to scatter, shout at him, fight. There's two people with wings, and two people make a fireman, and there's a guy with a laser pistol, and a woman that's too fast for him, a guy that keeps becoming small, and a man that keeps haunting his dreams and not fighting. 

Mick kills them all until he's left with four and he's breathing hard and he hates this weapon, hates this place, hates everything, but his mind screams at him and he needs to end this task. Wake up. Kill them for real. 

“You don't have to do this, Mick,” Ray Palmer pleads, voice high pitched and panicked. 

_“He took a beating for me,”_ a murmur in his head reminds him.

Angry, Mick fires. 

“Mick, I know what it's like to lose yourself!” Sara Lance tells him. 

_“I like you, Sara. You gotta lot of guts.”_

He doesn't know her. He doesn't know any of these people! They keep calling him _Mick_ but he doesn't know why. He kills her, and it leaves him with two. 

Rip Hunter and Leonard Snart.

Mick sneers. “What, not going to beg for your lives?”

“I know why you're doing this,” Rip Hunters says. He drops his pistol and puts his hands up. “It was always going to be this way.”

“Fine,” Mick growls. Shoots. Moves his aim to Snart. “You. Why do you keep haunting me?”

“You don't remember?” Snart drawls. “I'm hurt.”

“You're gonna be hurt like all the others.”

Snart steps forward. He hasn't even drawn his weapon, not once. “Brainwashing was never really my style,” he quips. Twirls one finger around in the air. “They've got you all wrapped up good though, hm, Mick? Erasing you. _No_ , wait. What's the word?” He grins. “ _Restoring_. Cute. That icepick of a feeling's gonna go away when you wake up, Mick. Know why? You'll be theirs. You'll be Chronos. The Boba Fett bounty hunter.”

“Shut up,” Mick spits. “You like to talk, don't you?”

“That's me.” He holds up his palms, chuckling. “The talker, the walker.” He steps 'round Mick. “The _romancer_ , when occasion calls.” Raises his brows. 

Mick should shoot him and get it over with, but he can't. It's like trying to hurt Druce. He's stuck in place, unable to move. 

“What you really want, Mick, is me dead. I get it. I fucked up. Come at me, take it out on me, not the entire team. Let them continue on their merry mission of ending Vandal Savage.”

Mick flinches at that name and Snart whistles. He's much closer now. Mick lost track of him for only a moment, but it cost him.

Snart peers at him, ducking his head, low. “They really got you good.” Looking _up_ at him, because that's who Leonard Snart was. He treated Mick like an equal, not like gum on the bottom of his shoe. He'd engage in idle chatter, not talk only when he wanted something from Mick. He was a friend, and—

He screams in pain and Snart jerks away. He was in 2046. He was _home_ and the world was chaos and he was king and it was _beautiful_ and then Snart took him away from that. Mick lost his partner, lost his equal, and just wanted to set things right. He sided with the pirates and he was going to get them home, but Snart didn't see it that way. Snart dragged him off into the woods— _these_ woods—and turned his cold gun onto him. But he didn't kill Mick, the coward. He left Mick. He _abandoned_ Mick in the middle of fucking nowhere and Mick was going to die.

Mick was going to die but the Time Masters saved him.

Druce saved him, and Mick was going to do his dirty work, with _pleasure_. He was going to end Rip Hunter and all of his _useless_ crew because vengeance is fire. Vengeance reveals things just the same as the flames can. 

It'll make him better. Return to him what he's lost. 

Snart's too close again, closer than before, and Mick puts the barrel of his rifle to Snart's chest. 

Snart smiles, sad.

“You're not real,” Mick whispers darkly. “But I'm gonna kill the real you. _Gut_ him alive, take everything from him like he did to me. And—” He's cut off by Snart's lips on his, insistent, pleading. And Mick feels it. He feels heat in his gut and he feels like he _exists_ and he wants to crawl into Snart, apologize, make things right. Just one more chance. One more, and he can make the right choices.

His mind shatters. 

Only one finger slips around the gun's trigger; it's all he needs. He fires and Snart falls away, limp, and Mick stand over him, his eyes dead and unblinking. His mind's silent. Reshaped for the last time. 

Mick's lip curls in disgust. He hefts the gun over his shoulder.

“You're not real, but I'm gonna kill the real you.”

* * *

Chronos wakes up. 

“Do you remember the mission?” Druce asks him.

“Hunt down the _Waverider_ , Rip Hunter, and his crew. Erase them from time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Len was like the last bit of Mick's subconscious trying to take hold over everything that was happening. 
> 
> There might be a second part to this that touches into episode stuff, because that was originally what was going to happen here. And then I just got to the end and went "nope, this is where we're staying. It has to be here."
> 
> Also apparently I have it cemented in my mind that they took Mick's scars away against his will. Yeah...
> 
> I would've added "Chronos" as a character tag but that felt too close to accidentally spoiling someone. idk. I'll add it in like. A week.
> 
> I could say ten hundred other things about this but I should probably stop editing this note.


End file.
